Another part of the Learning Story Bible study series is what we call a Story Feast. Here is a brief excerpt from the study describing the purpose behind feasting on stories.
We are learning about the Grand Narrative of Scripture, the story of grace God is telling in the cosmos and in our lives. But as we learned in our study of Psalm 78, we must do more than learn the story – we must share it!
Sharing our stories is essential to growing in faith, hope, and love. As we hear the stories others tell of how God has worked redemption in their lives, we often remember marvelous deeds God has done in our own lives. In telling stories of wrecked shalom, the Spirit often moves to grow our hope that “this will make a really good story one day.” Listening to others’ stories draws us to know and love them in new ways; sharing our own stories is a gift of love to other people.
Okay, you may say, “I get why I need to share my story. But what’s the deal with a feast?” Feasting is a key theme of the Bible. God’s people gathered at appointed times to reflect on his rescue in their lives. Passover, one of the most important feasts, was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread. These two feasts together recalled God’s rescue of his people from Egypt and his provision for them along their journey. Participants included everyone in the community, men and women, young and old, orphan, widow, and stranger. The feast revolved around ritual food: meat, bread, and wine, which were offered and eaten as a sacrifice to God.
Feasting is taken to a new and bizarre level when Christ says, “So Jesus said again, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. ” (John 6:53-54) As we celebrate the sacrament of Holy Communion, we are feasting on Christ’s body and blood, doing this in remembrance of the greatest story of rescue ever known. And as we follow Christ, we must do more than feast on him. We must gather together and offer our own stories as the bread and wine that sustain the life of the community. In so doing, we celebrate the faith, hope, and love that mark us as Christians.
I have hosted and attended hundreds of Story Feasts in the years since I introduced the concept to a Moms group I was working with, but last night I experienced one that I will remember forever. (Even as I write that, I have to renege, because every Story Feast I’ve attended has been remarkable in some way.)Still, this one stood our for the richness of the scene, the fare, and the women gathered.
Hosted by Jennie Schutt and Gigi McMurray, it was held in a neighborhood clubhouse that had been transformed to look like a scene out of a Narnian tale. Candles, a warm fire, fine bone china with varied creams for coffee, water, wine, chocolate cream brulee, chocolate bourbon cake, thick and pungent bread pudding, fruit…perhaps the only marring in my memory will be of tasting too much rich fare and not sleeping very well after all the deep chocolate I consumed!:)
But even richer than the fare were the around 20 women gathered there. Two here or there knew each other well, some had made acquaintance before, but they were not deeply connected to one another as a whole. That’s what made it seem even more like a foretaste of new heavens new earth life. One day we will be reunited with people we have hardly known or not known and experience healthy and whole intimacy. As stories spilled, we came to see the glory God had engraved into each woman’s life. We saw themes of God’s pursuit, of busted dreams in which grief led to a deeper knowledge of God, of God showing the way through foggy times and of women waiting courageously in uncertain time. And more.
I am full, so very full, this morning. Thankful to women with gifts of hospitality and creativity, thankful to courageous women willing to share their stories and seek the handwriting of God in them. Thankful to God for the ways He reveals the beauty of new creation He is writing in this world.
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